Lets start
with why we think amber is fossilized resin. Amber contains a
chemical called succinic acid. Most pine trees have resin which
lacks succinic acid and that has caused some to doubt whether or not
the amber is from fossilized trees. But recently two genera of pines
have been found which have resin containing succinic acid. These are
Keteleeria and Pseudolarix. Today, Pseudolarix is found in forests
of eastern China. But its connection with amber comes from the
discovery of Pseudolarix pine cones in amber on Axel Heidelberg
Island in northern Canada, and it contains succinic acid.

Ninety percent
of the Baltic Amber production comes from the southwestern part of
the Baltic sea. A 1280 sq. km area produces most of the amber from a
bed called Blue Earth. When storms rage in the Baltic, currents stir
up the sea floor, and amber floats to the surface and then drifts to
the beaches where it is picked up.

The amber
collected in this region because there was a huge pre-glacial forest
covering Scandinavia with trees, probably of the Pseudolarix genus.
When the resin oozed out of the tree, some insects, tree parts etc
were trapped and covered with the resin. The soft resin was then
washed down two rivers, the Alnarp and the Eridanos. These rivers no
longer exist, but like the river channels I have shown in the
geologic column (see pic below for an example from Oklahoma at
10,000 feet down), one can trace the course of these rivers in the
geologic column.

The river
deltas were in what is now the SE Baltic and NE Poland and it is
there that they deposited the soft resin on the bottom of the sea.
It is from this that a very few marine fossils were covered in the
soft resin and then turned into amber with burial and time.Below is a bee
from my personal collection.

The
preservation is great. Notice the hair on the leg of this bee.

Here are two
other insects the first is a small wasp the second looks like a
mosquito from my collection. The 2nd pic is a bit fuzzy but it is
the best I could do.

And I have an
nematoceran fly in Baltic Amber. (originally I mis- identified this
as a spider. Mark Isaac pointed out my error. Thanks.

The issues
raised by amber insects for the global flood advocates are these.

Amber
is not found in any rocks earlier than the Carboniferous (1
ancient unsubstantiated report-J. Smith Trans. Geol. Soc.
Glasgow, 1894). This is strange since according to the global
flood view, resin generating trees should have been on earth in
the pre-flood world.

Amber
is only found in deposits of the later parts of the global
flood. How did the trees grow and ooze resin during the later
stages of the flood and why didn't they do it earlier? Even if
we have the upper parts of the geologic column as a
recolonisation model, it still leaves unanswered why there is no
amber from the pre-flood world which would land it in the
Cambrian?

Amber
fossils take time to form. The tree must ooze the resin, the
insect must subsequently become entrapped in the resin, the now
fossiliferous but still soft resin must be transported to the
river delta to be buried. And then there is time required for
the resin to turn into amber.

The
rivers of that age which are detectable in the geologic column,
also would take time. How could this happen during a period when
50-100 feet per day of sediment was being dumped on the floor of
the global flood ocean?

This
argument is from a friend named SedRocks on TheologyWeb, who
pointed out that someone Eocene insects end up in Eocene amber,
Oligocene insects end up in Oligocene amber and Miocene insects
end up in Miocene amber. The question he raises is how does the
global flood sort the similar sized bobs of amber according to
the insects contained within it? That is a question no
young-earther tried to answer.

The YEC
explanation simply falls flat on its face. It has no explanatory
power at all. Unless of course, some YEC wishes to explain the data.

Did you know that you can be a Christian,
and believe that the earth is billions of years old? The
author of this article, Glenn Morton, made the transition from young
earth creationism to old earth creationism. To learn more
about old earth creationism, seeOld Earth Belief,
or check out the article Can You Be A
Christian and Believe in an Old Earth?

Feel free to check out more of this website. Our goal is to
provide rebuttals to the bad science behind young earth creationism,
and honor God by properly presenting His creation.